A Carnivorous Lemon
by KingOrokos
Summary: There's a dangerous piece of fruit on board the TARDIS. The Doctor is not amused. One-shot.


****(Doctor Who, the TARDIS, and all the characters used herein are property of the BBC. No copyright infringement intended.)

**A Carnivorous Lemon**

**_By Alex Smith_  
**

The Doctor crouched low to the ground, trying to make himself as small as possible. His eyes flickered from left to right, slowly taking in his surroundings, searching for an escape route. His breaths were heavy, and his hair was limp with sweat.

The lemon sat, unmoving. Amy, unperturbed, moved forward to tap him on the shoulder, her other hand behind her back.

'Doctor, what are we-'

'Shhh! No sudden movements!' he carefully shifted his weight from one leg to another. 'You might startle it into attacking.'

Amy looked at the lemon. Then she looked at the Doctor. Then, to be on the safe side, she looked at the lemon again.

'Sorry if I'm being slow, but – it's a lemon.'

'Yes,' the Doctor agreed, darkly, as if that settled the matter.

A few paces away, from around the corner of the corridor, Rory strolled into view. In his arms, he carried a wobbling pile of DVD cases, towering over him as he struggled to keep them balanced.

'I got all five Jurassic Parks,' he said. 'And the 27th century remakes of Harry Potter...'

'_Quiet_, Rory!'

Amy rolled her eyes. 'We're dealing with a deadly piece of fruit,' she said to him. Rory stopped in his tracks, the DVD pile tilting forwards at a worryingly extreme angle before swaying back into position and righting itself.

'Err... Is that a lemon?'

'Not just any lemon,' the Doctor said, his voice barely more than a whisper. 'No, this is one of the carnivorous, man-eating lemons of Bornux Minor.' He ran a hand through his messy brown hair, apprehensively. 'It can strip a body to the bones in less than three minutes.'

'With what? It doesn't have any _teeth_,' Amy whined, and the Doctor's figure stiffened, as if he was tensing himself to run. The lemon remained inert.

'Um, this is just a thought,' Rory said, from behind the stack of DVDs. 'But is it possible that it's just, y'know, a normal lemon? One of the not-eating-people types of lemon?'

'Yes, Rory, I had considered that.'

'And how do you know it's _not_ a normal lemon?'

The Doctor turned his head a fraction, so he could see Rory whilst keeping the lemon in his line of sight. 'There's no way a normal lemon could have breached the TARDIS' defences. I'm telling you, we're dealing with a deadly predator.'

'Capable of dissolving a man with its sour citrus juices,' Amy muttered.

'Amy! I'm serious. I want to two of you to start backing away down the corridor, slowly. When you get to the console room, activate the quarantine seal.'

'The...?'

'Quarantine seal. Series of energy-based shields designed to cut off certain areas of the TARDIS in case something breaches the outer shell.'

'And how are we supposed to activate it?'

'Turn the left tap anticlockwise four times, push the atomic accelerator into the console until it clicks, and press all the green ones.'

'All the green whats?'

'Buttons, levers, anything. If it's green, press it. If that doesn't work, press everything that _isn't_ green.'

'Those are hardly precise instructions!' Rory said, with a tinge of anxiety in his voice.

'Yes, well, my trial and error system for operating some of the more obscure security programs is a little vague,' the Doctor said irritably. 'Sorry, but my memory isn't perfect, and it's been a while since last used it.'

'Why's that?'

'Because it's very rare for anything to get past the TARDIS' outer shell without me letting it!'

'And yet,' Amy interjected, 'you've been defeated by a carnivorous lemon.'

'Enough joking about!' the Doctor said. 'Go! Both of you, now.'

'What are you going to do?' Rory asked.

'I'm going to distract it, draw its attention away from you.' He eyed the lemon – still inanimate – nervously. 'Then, once it's focused on going after me, I'm going to lead it into one of the outlying engine rooms and trick it into passing through the afterburner fumes. The smoke should subdue it enough for us to get it off of the ship.'

'Can't it hear you?' Amy asked. The Doctor frowned, his thoughts thrown off balance by the strange question.

'What?'

'Can't the lemon hear you? It could be listening to every word. You'll never be able to trick it if it knows what you're planning.'

'Don't be stupid. It's not intelligent. It can hear me, but it can't understand me. That would be silly.'

'_That_ would be silly?'

'Go!' he raised his arm slowly, the creases in his tweed jacket deepening. 'Back down that way. You know the way to the control room. Just remember, no sudden movements.'

'A-alright,' Rory said. He began to take careful steps backwards, never looking away from the lifeless lemon balancing on the floor of the corridor, a few feet from the Doctor. He inched backwards, one foot after another, carefully-

-bumping into the wall, jarring his shoulder and sending the huge stack of DVDs tumbling from his hands, crashing into the ground in a plastic cacophony of sound.

Everyone froze. The Doctor, still in his crouch, long limbs stretching up to fill the TARDIS corridor, his eyes fixed on the lemon. Amy, halfway out of the room, hands held behind her back. Rory, arms stretched out in a too little, too late attempt to catch the fallen boxes.

The lemon sat, unmoving.

Nobody spoke, for a long time. Then, just as the tension was becoming palpable, Rory said, 'Doctor?'

'Yes?'

'I'm... I'm not an expert on, well, man-eating lemons or, um, alien stuff in general, or anything really, but... Is it possible that it really _is_ a normal lemon?'

The Doctor didn't move for a second. Then, in one fluid motion, he reached over and picked the lemon up. He rolled it over in his palm, sniffed it cautiously, and then prodded it with his thumb.

'Ah.'

He turned to face Amy and Rory, his expression completely serious.

'I don't think this is one of the carnivorous, man-eating lemons of Bornux Minor after all,' he said. 'I think it's one of the normal, harmless, grows-on-a-lemon-tree types of lemon.'

Amy nodded, slowly. 'How surprising.'

'But how did it get here?' the Doctor asked. His question was posed more to the TARDIS than to either of the Ponds. His words echoed around the narrow passage, and the only reply was the hum of the ship's engines as they rose and fell gently. When it became clear that no answer was forthcoming, he jumped to his feet and spun around on one heel energetically.

'Right. I'm going to go and conduct a full system scan to see if I can figure out how a lemon ended up in the middle of nowhere, on board my TARDIS.' He strode away, arms shoved deep into his pockets, already muttering to himself. He was a picture of concentration.

Amy and Rory remained where they were. Slowly, Rory looked over to his wife.

'Amy...'

'Yes?'

'I don't suppose you have any idea how the lemon got there?'

Her eyes widened, and she brushed a stray piece of red hair out of them. 'Who – me?'

'Oh god, you're doing your I'm Innocent face. It was you, wasn't it?'

Amy frowned for a moment, but then a smile stretched uncontrollably across her face. She pulled her arms out from behind her back, revealing what looked like...

'Is that a _cabbage_?'

'I'm going to hide it in that hammock he has underneath the console. See if he has anything to say about doomsday vegetables from the planet Wobblegob.'

With that, she walked off, following the Doctor back to the control room. Rory stood still in the corridor, alone, for a long moment.

'I'm surrounded by lunatics,' he murmured to himself.

And then he left, hurrying in Amy's footsteps to watch her next prank unfold.

* * *

**A/N: Thanks a million for reading my story! I wanted to write something light, funny, and dialogue-heavy, and this is what I ended up with. Please leave a review letting me know what you thought - particularly if you thought it was funny, because humour isn't what I would consider my strongest point. Thank you, and have a lovely day.**

**-Alex  
**


End file.
